Children use both brain hemispheres to understand language, unlike adults says new finding:
The study, published Sept. 7, 2020, in PNAS, focuses on one task — language — and finds that to understand language (more specifically, processing spoken sentences), children use both hemispheres. This finding fits with previous and ongoing research led by Georgetown neurology professor Elissa L. Newport, PhD, a former postdoctoral fellow Olumide Olulade, MD, PhD, and neurology assistant professor Anna Greenwald, PhD.
[...] Their study solves a mystery that has puzzled clinicians and neuroscientists for a long time, says Newport.
In almost all adults, sentence processing is possible only in the left hemisphere, according to both brain scanning research and clinical findings of language loss in patients who suffered a left hemisphere stroke.
But in very young children, damage to either hemisphere is unlikely to result in language deficits; language can be recovered in many patients even if the left hemisphere is severely damaged. These facts suggest that language is distributed to both hemispheres early in life, Newport says. However, traditional scanning had not revealed the details of these phenomena until now. "It was unclear whether strong left dominance for language is present at birth or appears gradually during development," explains Newport.
Now, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) analyzed in a more complex way, the researchers have shown that the adult lateralization pattern is not established in young children and that both hemispheres participate in language during early development.
Brain networks that localize specific tasks to one or the other hemisphere start during childhood but are not complete until a child is about 10 or 11, she says. "We now have a better platform upon which to understand brain injury and recovery."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 13 2020, @10:39AM (1 child)
I wonder what happens when only the right side works...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 13 2020, @11:08AM
Humor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 13 2020, @03:07PM
"Young people wonder how the adult world can be so boring. The secret is that it is not boring to adults because they have learnt to enjoy simple things like covert malice at one another’s expense."
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Sunday September 13 2020, @03:17PM
To say PNAS without laughing.
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Sunday September 13 2020, @07:05PM
... the fact that it is harder to learn a new language after the age of eleven - ie the age which you start learning foreign
languages in UK schools.
It is also likely that you will never lose your original accent if you learn your new language after the age of twelve,
and you will find it difficult to acquire or recognise linguistic sounds that you did not encounter before the age of eleven.
Both of these facts have been well known since at least the 1960's.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 13 2020, @08:55PM
https://neurosciencenews.com/language-hemispheres-children-16983/ [neurosciencenews.com]